Portable Magic
by ICanStopAnytime
Summary: Daryl Dixon has a dirty little secret: he loves to read. This collection of prison-era vignettes involves interaction with a different main character in each chapter (1-Carol, 2-Michonne, 3-Glenn and Maggie, 4-Rick 5-Beth and Judith, and 6-Sasha).
1. A Grief Observed

**A/N** : _I took down the original version of this story so I could put up this edited version. I've tightened it up a little bit and also added a little more Caryl, as the original version really didn't have much. So if you didn't see it the first time around, please give it a read, or feel free to read it again. This is more of a character-driven than a plot-driven piece._

[*]

 **"Books are uniquely portable magic."**

 **\- Stephen King,** _ **On Writing**_

No matter how hard he worked, Daryl still felt the weight of the empty hours between those gray stone walls. Maybe that was why he ended up, in the prison library, running his fingertip over the dusty spines of books. His father had called him "too big for his goddamn britches," "uppity little shit," and "lazy ass" every time he caught him reading a book. So Daryl had learned to hide his reading. When Andrea had tossed him that book on Hershel's farm, he'd said, "What, no pictures?" But when she was gone, he'd read it cover to cover, because with books, Daryl could be alone without ever having to be alone.

Daryl got his love of reading from his mother, who had been taught to hide her intelligence by her own mother. That must have been quite the challenge, married to Will Dixon, but eventually, she drowned her smarts in cheap box wine. Before she had, though, she used to sneak into her boys' bedrooms at night and read to them from books she'd bought for ten cents apiece at the Salvation Army.

The first one Daryl could remember, and still remembered, was _Harold and the Purple Crayon_. He must have been two when she first read it to him, but the dream of drawing himself a path right out of the Dixon cabin and into some other, better world lingered with him for years to come.

When Daryl's mother read to him, she'd point at every word as she said it, and he'd follow the chipped, cheap red polish of her nail across each line. By the time he started Kindergarten, he was reading on a second grade level, and he was so bored by school and the books they read that they thought he was an idiot. So in first grade, they put him in the "slow readers" group. It wasn't until Daryl's fourth grade year that a teacher discovered Daryl could read and read quite well.

Miss O'Henry wasn't _his_ teacher, but she was in charge of clearing the playground after recess, and she found him hiding in one of the tire tunnels, reading _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn._ She had him moved out the slow readers group and into her own class the second quarter, and that was the best year Daryl ever had in school. That was also the first, and only time in his youth, that Daryl Dixon ever fell in love.

Miss O'Henry was like an angel from on high, with her flowing red hair and bright emerald eyes and her subtle encouragements. He only got sent to the principal's office once those last three quarters, and though he hadn't cared a wit what the principal thought of his f-bomb, he'd been heartbroken to think he'd disappointed _her_.

But the next year Miss O'Henry married and moved, and his fifth grade teacher loathed him. That was also the year his mother passed out while smoking and burned the cabin to the ground. Merle was away at juvie, and it was just him and his father after that.

For the next two years, Daryl wouldn't touch a book.

But these days, in the eerie peace that had descended in the midst of a monstrous world, he needed to distract his mind. Not that long ago, he'd repeatedly driven a knife into his own brother, or, at least, into the thing that had once been his brother. Those glassy eyes that stared up at him while he thrust the blade through flesh and brain were like a one-way mirror - no one seeing out. Daryl needed to drive that image from his mind.

He seized a book and drew it out: _A Grief Observed_ by C.S. Lewis. That was the man who wrote all those Narnia books he'd read in fourth grade. Miss O'Henry had given him the entire box set to take home. In return, he'd brought her his most prized Eastern Cherokee arrowhead. He lay it shyly on her desk the next morning, muttering, "It brings good luck."

 _The Chronicles of Narnia_ he'd hidden in his foot locker at home, under two old blankets and his B.B. gun, and drawn them out to read, by flashlight, late at night, one ear turned toward the door, in case he should be caught. He used to daydream of escaping to Narnia, of entering a world where no one knew him as the worthless piece of shit his father always said he was.

He now took _A Grief Observed_ to the window sill, which was wide enough to make a seat. Sunlight filtered in through the barred window above, and the wood was hard and warm beneath his legs, which he stretched out until the heels of his boots were flat against the wall on the other side of the pane. Daryl leaned back against the wall and opened the book. He thought of his brother.

Carol had once told him that Merle wasn't good for him. And maybe she was right. Merle sure as hell had never made Daryl feel good _about himself_ , the way Carol did, or the way she at least _tried_ to do. But Merle had been there. At least some of the time. And he was the only one who had. He'd taught Daryl to hunt well, and if not for that, Daryl wouldn't be alive today. When Daryl was young, and their father was in a drunken rage, Merle would hide Daryl under his bed, leave him there, shut the bedroom door, and go out to deal with their father alone. Daryl heard the yelling and the things breaking, but he'd never known quite what happened to Merle until Merle was gone away to juvie and it started happening to him.

When Daryl left home for good at seventeen, Merle was just getting out of the army. He let Daryl roam with him and found him work. He made sure there was always food to eat, cigarettes to smoke, and a roof over their heads during cold or rainy weather (sometimes it was a friend's place, sometimes a cheap motel, in a pinch - Merle's pick-up truck). So Merle had been there, at least some of the time. In the end, Daryl's brother had gone out fighting, like he'd always wanted to. And he'd gone out fighting for _them_.

Daryl turned a page. He loved the rasping sound the paper made, almost as much as he loved the smell of books. It was a soothing sound, like the song of spring crickets or the hooting of the winter owl. His body grew warm from the sun as he read, and he shed his leather jacket, letting it fall to the library floor, so that now one bare shoulder pressed against the wall beneath the bar-lined window.

"No one ever told me," he read, "that grief felt so much like fear." For the past few weeks, he'd felt ready for a fight, felt as if something might jump out at him any moment. He'd assumed it was because he was living in a world of the undead, but the feeling was stronger than usual. It was strange in its sheer intensity. Was that feeling grief?

The book was short, a diary of sorts, written by a man who had lost his wife. Daryl finished it quickly and then flipped back and forth among the pages, reading some of the words again. "The death of a beloved is an amputation." Hershel sometimes felt phantom pain in his missing limb. Was that like when Daryl found himself thinking, "Need to tell Merle" again and again, about some hunting or tracking discovery, only to remember there was no Merle to tell?

Carol must still feel that phantom pain, too. Some nights, he heard her quiet crying drifting from her cell up to the platform where he slept, and he lay awake listening to it, growing angry and annoyed and wishing he could silence it. But he couldn't help to silence it by going to hunt for Sophia anymore. He couldn't do a damn thing. Sometimes, he knew there was some other feeling alongside his anger, an almost irresistible urge to go down to her and take her in his arms. But he didn't, because he couldn't believe anyone could be comforted by his embrace.

Most nights, Carol didn't cry anymore. But some nights, she did. Maybe that was because, like the book he was reading said, "In grief nothing stays put. One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats."

The sound of a throat clearing startled Daryl. Instinctively, he closed the book and shoved it between his hip and the wall before turning his head to see Carol approaching. She came to a stop a foot from the window sill. "What were you hiding so fast?" A teasing smile spread across her face. "The prison library doesn't have porn, does it?"

"Nah," he mumbled, his ears reddening beneath his disorderly hair. He hadn't needed to hide it. Carol made fun of him, from time to time, but never in a way that pointed out his shortcomings or differences. Her ribbing was always affectionate. She wasn't going to ridicule him for reading. "It…uh…" He pried the book back out and then swung so that his legs were draping over the window seat and he was facing her. "It's a book. Ya might like it. I mean, ya won't _like_ it, but…uh…ya might could get somethin' out of it." He handed it to her.

Carol turned the book over and read the blurb on the back. "Thank you," she said quietly. She looked up at him, searching his eyes in that way that always made him feel naked.

He turned his eyes down.

"How are you doing?" she asked softly. "You haven't been at dinner with us for a few days. Are you eating?"

He nodded. "Enough."

She smiled sadly. "We're having dinner now. You want to come join us?"

He didn't. But he didn't want to upset her by refusing either. She'd asked so damn nicely, in that quiet, caring way of hers. "Mhmhm."

He slid off the window seat and followed her. She held the book in her left hand as they strolled almost shoulder to shoulder from the library. Her lithe presence reassured him. She paused at a bookcase near the door, which contained graphic novels and comic books, and laughed. He loved the sound of her laugh. It always came like an unexpected burst of sunlight on an overcast day. "I can't believe they have these in _a prison_ library!"

"What?" Daryl asked.

She pulled out _Garfield At Large_ and turned the horizontal, red cover toward him. "Can you imagine a murderer reading one of these?"

Daryl snorted.

"I bought this at the book fair in 5th grade," she told him.

Daryl never bought books at his school's book fair. His parents never gave him any money for anything. What little money he had in elementary school, he made by collecting the beer and soda cans and bottles littered near the creek and turning them into the recycling center at the grocery store. The spare change was never enough for more than a candy bar. He always got the Baby Ruth.

Carol's face contorted, the way it did when she was fighting back sudden tears, and he didn't know where the pain had come from. He wanted to ask if she was all right, but words like that were hard for him, so he just cast her a worried look, until she spoke. "Sophia loved Garfield, too. We even considered naming the dog Pooky, but she settled on Butterscotch instead. He was kind of that color."

"Pooky?" Daryl asked.

"It's what Garfield called his beloved teddy bear."

"Mhmhm." His eyes flitted shyly over her face. He was trying to gauge how upset she was, and wondering what he could possibly do about it. She noticed him observing her and gave him a bitter-sweet smile before walking on.

They were at the door of the library when it occurred to him to ask, "Hey, how'd ya know I'd be in here?"

She smiled, not a sad smile this time but the teasing one that was becoming so familiar to him, and said, "I know you better than you think I do, Pooky." She bumped his shoulder playfully with hers.

His lips jerked into a quick smile. "Stop."

[*]

That night, when Daryl heard Carol crying, he _did_ come down from the landing. She was on the top bunk in her cell, facing the wall. He stood with one shoulder against the open, iron bars of the door and said to her back, "Sorry, should of never given ya that book."

She rolled over to face him and wiped her eyes roughly with the back of her hand. "No, it was cathartic. I was glad I read it."

He swallowed. It took a lot of effort to ask the question, but he made himself. "Anythin' I can do?"

She breathed out and then sniffled in. "Could you maybe sleep here tonight? I don't want to be alone."

"Mhmhm. Go get my pillow and blanket."

When he returned, he crawled onto the mattress on the bottom bunk and looked up at the black wire coils above. She wasn't crying anymore. "This mattress is more comfortable than the cement," he said. "Guess maybe I could stand bein' in a cage, if the door's always open."

Her head appeared over the top of the bunk. In the darkness, her eyes shined with the last remnant of her tears. "Maybe you should claim a cell of your own tomorrow. Maybe it's time for you to come down from your perch and join the commoners."

He smiled. Her head disappeared. The bed creaked above as she rolled onto her side. Daryl stared at the black coils for a long time, until they blurred together and he faded into sleep.


	2. Who Makes These Changes?

Daryl wasn't quite sure how he ended up in the poetry section of the prison library. He'd never been much of a poetry reader, unless you counted the Dr. Seuss books his mother used to read him before he lost her to the wine and then the liquor and then the fire. His favorite was _Yertle the Turtle,_ because it was good to see that oppressive turtle bastard end up in the mud, brought down from his mighty throne by a runty thing. Back then, Daryl was so much smaller then than his brother and his father and all his cousins, and he liked the idea of the little guy sticking it to the man.

But, in general, Daryl had little interest in poetry. So, today, when his finger landed on a volume of poems, he didn't think he'd like it. The book was by some guy name Rumi. What a weird name.

Daryl settled into his window seat and flipped somewhere near the middle of the book.

 _Who makes these changes?_  
 _I shoot an arrow right._  
 _It lands left._

He was instantly intrigued. Maybe it was the arrow metaphor, or maybe it was the fact that he didn't feel in control of his own world. Every plan they'd made so far had come to nothing – they'd abandoned their first camp, the CDC had exploded, and Hershel's farm was overrun. They had the prison now, of course, but for how long? The Governor still appeared to be alive, though where he could possibly be was a mystery. Daryl had just returned to the prison this morning with Michonne after following the man's trail to a dead end, a thought which struck him when he read the next lines:

 _I ride after a deer,_  
 _and find myself_  
 _chased by a hog._ _  
_ _I plot to get what I want_ _  
_ _and end up in prison._ _  
_ _I dig pits to trap others_ _  
_ _and fall in._

The words felt like a warning.

 _I should be suspicious_  
 _of what I want._

"Carol said I might find you here."

Daryl jumped at Michonne's voice. He swung abruptly off the sill into a standing position and left the book on the ledge as she crossed the library floor. "I wonder if we should try going south," she said as she walked between two columns of tables.

"Look, I cain't go with ya next time. Trail ran cold. And I got to hunt. We keep bringin' people in. More mouths to feed every week."

She came to a stop a few feet from him and jutted out her hip in that self-confident way of hers.

"Rick thinks we should give up the chase," Daryl told her.

"Yeah, he told me he'd like to see me stay put for awhile." Michonne pulled out a chair. "What are you doing in here anyway?" She straddled the chair backwards, her lean legs spread wide on either side and her arms crossed over the back. She spied the book on the windowsill " _You_ read Rumi? He's one of my ten favorite poets."

Ten? Who the hell had _ten_ favorite poets? Michonne had earned his respect faster than most people - for her strength, her killing power, and her take-no-shit demeanor - but now she was earning his _curiosity_. "Ya read a lot of poetry?"

"Why do you sound so surprised? I don't fit your stereotype of the urban black woman?"

They'd spent enough nights tracking the Governor together, relying on each other on the road and in the wilderness, that Daryl sometimes forgot his own brother had once tried to kill her. Or that Merle could act like a racist. But Daryl had never thought he was, not really. Merle had joined an Aryan gang in juvie, of course, and that's where he got his swastika tattoo, but he _had_ to join a gang. That's just how you got by in those places, and the gangs were divided along racial lines. And, yes, Merle sure had said a lot of dumb ass racist shit in his life, but when it came to how he _treated_ people, well, Merle was an egalitarian. He made no racial distinction. He had the same contempt and selfish disregard for everyone.

"Dunno. I fit your stereotype of a white trash redneck?"

"To a T," she said.

His lips pursed into a stern line.

She smiled. "I'm joking. You're different than I expected you to be. You're not like your brother."

"Maybe Merle wasn't like Merle either," Daryl said.

"Well, I certainly wasn't expecting it when he let me go."

Daryl leaned back against the windowsill and crossed his arms over his chest. "Reckon I can see why ya might knee-jerk hate me, what with Merle trying to kill ya and all."

"That _was_ unpleasant," she agreed.

"But you and I get along a'ight." He paused, a little uncertain. "Don't we? 'Spite my brother."

Michonne stopped straddling the chair and stood instead. She leaned back against the table. "I've dealt with racism my entire life," she told him. "It doesn't go away just because you have a luxury apartment in the city, fancy art friends, and a six figure job. A racist like Merle…" She shook her head. "That's the _easiest_ kind to deal with."

"Whatcha mean?"

Michonne walked over to a bookshelf, tilted her head to read the spines, and strolled along the row until she found what she was looking for. She held up _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_. "Ever read this?"

Daryl shook his head.

She flipped through the pages, back and forth, skimming the words, until she found what she was looking for. "Always," she read, "the black people have advanced further when they have seen they had to rise up against a system that they clearly saw was outright against them. Under the steady lullabies sung by foxy liberals, the Northern Negro became a beggar. But the Southern Negro, facing the honestly snarling white man, rose up to battle that white man for his freedom - long before it happened in the North." She snapped the book shut and left it on a nearby table.

"That how ya see me? As a snarlin' white man?"

"Well, to be fair, you don't exactly smile often. Though I've sometimes seen Carol bring a smile out of you."

Daryl looked down because his cheeks felt a bit hot. When he'd gotten control of himself, he looked up again. "I ain't no racist. Far as I'm concerned, there's two kinds of people in this world. The ones that got my back, and the ones that don't."

"And which one am I?" Michonne asked.

"When we's on the road, and you's behind me, ya ever see me checkin' over my shoulder?"

Lips closed, she smiled and shook her head. "So will you have _my_ back, then? Go out there with me, Dixon. Let's go south. Try to pick up the Governor's trail. Just one more time."

Daryl sighed. "Once more? Then ya'll stop?"

"I'm not promising _I'll_ stop, but I promise I'll stop asking you to come with me."

Daryl nodded. "A'ight then. But give me a couple of days. Want to do some more huntin' first." He also wanted to make sure Carol was doing all right, that she was sleeping again and not crying herslef to sleep. "Make sure we leave all these people with some food."

"Speaking of food," Michonne said, "Shall we?" She jerked her head toward the library door. It was dinner time. "Carol's like a magician with that squirrel, isn't she?"

"Damn good cook," Daryl agreed. He trailed behind her, snatching up _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_ in his hand as he passed the table. He shoved it in the inside pocket of his leather jacket. As he followed her down the hall and out toward the cantina, she didn't look back over her shoulder once.

[*]

Daryl had claimed an empty cell near Carol's. That way he could go to her quickly if she ever asked for him. It was more comfortable here than on his perch, anyway, but no way in hell was he ever shutting that iron door.

Tonight, he left his large lantern flashlight glowing on the end table so he could read _The Autobiography of Malcolm X_. He was on page 234 when Michonne said, "Knock, knock."

Daryl looked up from the book.

"You're actually reading it," she said. "You like it so far?"

"Guess." Daryl wasn't sure why he hadn't just said _yes._ He was used to pretending he didn't like what he read, but there was no reason to do that here. "Can relate."

"Relate? To Malcolm X?"

Daryl shurgged. "Man said, the main thing you got to remember is that everything in the world is a hustle. Hell, sounds like somethin' Merle would of said."

Michonne chuckled.

Another line in particular had also leaped out at him, though he didn't share it with Michonne: "Once he is motivated, no one can change more completely than the man who has been at the bottom." Daryl felt like he had changed, that he _was_ changing, and he knew that Carol's faith in him was part of the reason for that. But he wasn't sure where it would all end up, and part of him was afraid of the change.

Michonne wrapped a hand around an iron bar at the opening to his cell. "Rick's been trying to talk me out of going again."

"Yeah, well, Rick likes ya...likes ya to stay put." He turned a page. "Feels responsible for everyone's life, ya know."

"What do you think of him?" Michonne asked.

"Rick? Good man."

"He was going to turn me over to the Governor."

"Well," Daryl said, putting a finger in the book to hold his page, "ya weren't one of us then." He'd never much liked Rick's tendency to make unilateral decisions without consulting those it would effect, but he wasn't sure he would have made a different decision if he'd been in Rick's place. Daryl wouldn't want the responsibility that had rested so heavily on Rick's shoulders for so long. Even being part of the Prison Council now made him a little uneasy. He was glad Rick had given up sole power, but Daryl had never been responsible for anyone but himself before, and he'd never been a leader. He'd always followed Merle. He never felt fully confident that he belonged at that table. "Had to think of his own people."

"But I am now? One of you?"

"Yer here, ain't ya?"

Michonne smiled, nodded her goodbye, and walked on.

Daryl went back to reading. He had made it another forty pages when he heard Carol's familiar voice, that soft tone that always made him feel like he actually _mattered_ : "Goodnight."

He looked up to see her leaning against the open door of his cell. Her soft blue eyes were on the book, and they were beautiful in the hazy mist from the lantern flashlight on is end table. He lowered the book flat against his lap. "'Nite," he said. "Good squirrel stew tonight."

"Thank you."

"Nah. Thank you."

"You caught the squirrel."

"Ya cooked it."

She smiled. She put her foot back out in the hallway but then she lingered. He waited for her to say whatever it was she was going to say. Maybe she'd ask him to sleep on the bottom bunk in her cell again tonight. He _would,_ if she'd just _ask._

"Goodnight," she said agian.

"Nite."

And then her lithe frame vanished from his doorway.

He stayed up late reading, partly because he was interested in the book, and partly because he wanted to know if Carol was going to cry tonight. But she didn't cry.

He fell asleep somewhere beyond page 350. Sometime in the night, the bulb in his lantern burned out.


	3. The Gift of the Magi

Today, Daryl had come to the prison library to return _The Complete Short Stories of O'Henry_. He'd grabbed it because of the author's name – the same last name as the beautiful, young fourth grade teacher who had taken an interest in him and then vanished from his life. He'd taken the book on his latest tracking expedition with Michonne, which had once again resulted in nothing. He hadn't read the entire book on the trip, but he'd read a handful of the stories. The one that stuck out most was "The Gift of the Magi."

 _What a couple of dumb asses_ , he'd thought when he got to the last page. The woman had sold her hair to buy her husband a chain for his pocket watch, and he'd sold his pocket watch to buy her a comb for her hair. Now the idiots had nothing but a couple of useless presents.

But when he'd clicked off the flashlight, and rolled on his side and closed his eyes, Daryl hadn't been able to stop thinking about that story, about what it must be like to love someone so much that you'd sell your most prized possession just to make that person happy. Not just to love someone like that – but, more amazingly, to be loved that way in return.

He was sliding _The Complete Stories of O'Henry_ back on the shelf when he heard the door slam open against the wall. The thud was followed by a girlish giggle and a boyish laugh. Daryl was on the other side of the row of books, where he couldn't see or be seen. The sound of smacking lips filled the library, followed by a table screeching a few inches across the floor, and then Maggie's voice: "Fuck me. Fuck me right here."

 _Oh shit._ Daryl looked frantically around, but there was only one exit from this library, and that was through the front door. So he cleared his throat, loudly, and then kicked the metal bottom of the book case so that it clanged.

"What was that?" came Glen's voice.

"Walker?" Maggie asked nervously.

A _click click_ resounded in the library as one member of the couple racked back his or her handgun.

 _Oh shit._ They were going to start clearing the aisles, and people could be awfully jumpy in a world full of walkers. So, as much as he hated to do it, Daryl said, "Just me."

"Daryl?" Glenn asked. He appeared at the end of the aisle. With his thumb, he slid up his safety and then holstered his handgun. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Returnin' a book. 'Cause this here's a lieberry."

"Oh." Glenn's tan skin reddened, the way it had when he'd been drinking at the CDC. "We were just…uh…looking for some books ourselves."

Now Maggie appeared at the end of the aisle. Her blouse was off one button, like she'd done it up hastily and, when she realized there was no hole for the top button, just left it that way. She slid her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. "Yeah. We were trying to find a wedding planning guide or something."

"Mhmhm," Daryl said. "Weddin' plannin' guide."

Glenn laughed nervously. "But I guess a prison library probably isn't going to have one of those."

"Y'all havin' a weddin'?" Daryl asked.

Maggie _was_ wearing an engagement ring Glenn had given her. He'd taken it off a walker. Daryl wasn't much of a romantic, to say the least, but something about that just didn't sit right with him. He couldn't imagine himself ever proposing to a woman, but if he _did_ , he was pretty damn sure he wouldn't do it with a ring he'd slid off of a finger he'd chopped off some lurching, growling undead thing.

But he couldn't deny that Glenn and Maggie were a loving, happy couple, and that wasn't because they were about to fuck on the library table. After all, Daryl supposed if someone asked him to fuck her on a library table, he might be happy to oblige, regardless of whether or not he even liked her. After all, he hadn't gotten laid in…well, he couldn't remember how long.

The last time he and Merle – which was to say Merle – had picked up a couple of women in a bar, Daryl hadn't exactly seen things to completion. When they'd gone back to the two-bedroom trailer where they were "house sitting" at the time, Merle had taken first pick, as usual, and left the other girl for him. Daryl took her into his bedroom eagerly enough at first, but she kept doing things that turned him off.

First, she stripped, and that was all well and good, but when she was naked, she tried to kiss him on the lips. He'd never been much for kissing, so he kept his lips closed. Then she tried to caress his cheek with the back of her hand. He flinched away, thinking of all the times his father had shouted, "I'll show you the back of my hand!" So he turned her away from his face, to the wall, and pressed her palms flat against it. She seemed game for that position, so he proceeded to unbuckle. But when she heard the sound of his zipper rasping, she said, "Oh, Daddy! Yes, Daddy!" That was the final straw. It just plain creeped him out. He backed off immediately and zipped up his pants.

She asked, "What the hell's wrong with you?" and he couldn't answer. "Are you a fag or something?"

"Ain't no fag."

She shook her head and went to join Merle and the other woman. Daryl could hear them going at in the other room, and he went for a walk beneath the starlight. He stayed out all night, dreading Merle's ridicule and not wanting to see that woman again. He crawled back into his bed at sunrise. After sleeping for a few hours, he got up to eat breakfast in the trailer's tiny kitchen.

Merle emerged from his room, scratching his bare stomach above a pair of frayed, plaid boxers, and sat down at the tiny table across from Daryl. He raised a single finger and then lowered it into a droopy limp before he burst out laughing. Daryl flushed an angry red. "Don't worry 'bout it, little brother," Merle had said. "That just means more for Merle. More for Daddy!" And then he'd laughed again.

But Maggie and Glenn weren't just two people getting it on to get it off. There was something else going on there. Daryl had never seen a marriage that really worked, not once his entire life. All relationships between men and women were broken, sooner or later, one way or another, as far as he was concerned. Hell look at his own parents. His father had cheated more than once, with more than one woman, and that drove Mama to drink. Or look at Carol and that shit husband of hers, that man Daryl still sometimes wished _he'd_ had the chance to kill. Or hell, even look Rick and Lori - they had stayed together, true enough, but there was always a quiet bitterness running like a river beneath the surface of their marriage. Lori had fucked Rick's best friend, after all, and _still_ she'd nagged Rick almost to her dying day. But there was something about Glenn and Maggie that made Daryl believe that maybe two people _could_ get married, _stay_ married, and _not_ grow to hate each other.

Glenn was looking at Maggie at the moment, his mouth half open, the way he let it fall when he didn't know quiet what to say. "Uhh..."

"Yeah!" Maggie exclaimed. "Sure. We're having a wedding. Carl can be the ring bearer."

Glenn's brow crinkled. "He's a little old for a ring bearer, isn't he?"

"Well we can argue about that later," Maggie told him.

"You coming?" Glenn asked Daryl.

"To the weddin'?" Daryl asked.

"Yeah, the wedding, which is going to be...um..." He glanced at Maggie.

"Tomorrow," Maggie said decisively. "After dinner."

"Tomorrow after dinner," Glenn echoed.

"Well I'll have to check my social calendar," Daryl said.

"You do that," Glenn told him, taking Maggie's hand and taking a step back. "Make sure you RSVP."

Maggie smiled, waved goodbye at Daryl, and followed Glen, giggling, out the library door.

[*]

The couple had their wedding, such as it was, the next night. Maggie wore a sundress, even though it was about fifty degrees and she was shivering. Daryl had no idea where she got it from. Glenn had a sports coat on that was about one size too big for him. Beth had picked a bunch of wildflowers and made Maggie a bouquet, and she was giddy to play maid of honor, though there was no best man and Carl did not actually bear the rings.

Carol had given Maggie her old wedding ring, and one of the refugees from Woodbury, who had lost his wife, supplied Glenn the other. Daryl wasn't sure if that was more or less romantic than chopping off a walker's fingers. Which was worse - rings from the living shells of dead people or rings from dead marriages?

Hershel did a great job with the wedding ceremony, talking in that folksy, calm way of his, about light in the midst of darkness and love like a life raft in a sea of adversity or some such shit - Daryl wasn't really sure. He was busy watching Carol out of the corner of his eye as she stood beside him watching the wedding. He was trying to determine what emotion was flickering in her soft, doe-like eyes. The feeling seemed to flit from happiness to sadness to hope to sorrow, second by second by second.

When the bride was kissed, everyone clapped, Daryl joining in two beats too late. Maggie flung the bouquet over her shoulder, straight into Carol's startled hands.

Carol laughed and looked at Daryl. "Just make sure you get down on one knee when you propose," she teased. "I'm traditional like that."

Crimson crept across his cheeks. "Stop."

[*]

Later that night, when he was headed to his cell, he saw Carol arranging the flowers she'd caught in a vase on her little end table. She spied him and smiled and that made his feet slow to a gradual halt. "Pretty aren't they?" she asked.

 _Not as pretty as you,_ he wanted to say, but he was afraid that might sound creepy or wrong, so instead he said, "Mhm."

"Wish you'd worn a suit to the wedding. I'd pay good money to see you in one."

He ducked his head and studied the cinder block floor. He would look like a goddamn fool in a suit. Carol had to know that, and she was teasing again. But sometimes she sounded half serious when she teased. He never quite knew for sure why she said the things she did. He peered up at her again. She was dressed for bed in clinging gray sweats pants and a pink tank top, and damn if she didn't look pretty in that get-up. Carol was a different kind of pretty than the women in magazines, though. A softer, more _real_ kind of pretty, a pretty that came up out from the inside and then crept up on you, real quiet and stealth. "Right pretty," he muttered.

"The flowers?"

He opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. "Mhm."

She ran a fingertip over the petals of one. "Not as pretty as the Cherokee rose," she said quietly and then bit her bottom lip, and he wished to God he hadn't stopped here. He felt like he was responsible for that sad look on her face - that it was somehow his fault she'd thought of Sophia - that he'd dredged up that pain for her.

"Sorry," he said.

She looked away from the flower and at him. "For what?"

"Dunno," he muttered. "Yer sad."

She walked over until she was a few inches from him. "That's not your fault, Daryl." Carol reached out and stroked his cheek with the back of her hand, once, softly, and let her hand fall to her side. He didn't flinch when she touched him, and the tender warmth of her fingers felt good against his flesh, but he had no idea why she'd done that. _She_ was the one who needed comforting, and he couldn't even move. He swallowed. His stomach flipped and flopped and flipped again. "Do somethin?" he managed at last. "Can I?"

"Sleep here again?" she asked. "Just...keep me company?"

"Mhmhm." He nodded. "Get my shit. Be right back."

He settled onto the bottom bunk again, after taking off his boots and shoes and jacket but leaving on his clothes. His crossbow leaned against the foot of the bed now. He thought of that man in the story, selling his pocket watch to buy a comb for his wife, and he thought maybe he'd sell his own damn crossbow, if that could somehow make Carol stop feeling sad.

The bunk above him creaked. "Thank you, Daryl," came Carol's familiar, soft voice, drifting down to his ears. "I'll sleep better tonight."

He had no idea how his mere presence could help Carol sleep, but it seemed to, because she was out before he was. Two cells away, he could hear the newlyweds going at it, whispering _Shh's!_ between moans. Normally the sound would annoy him, but tonight he found himself thinking, _Good for them._

Daryl closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.


	4. David and Jonatahn

The prison library had a hell of a lot of Bibles.

Daryl's thoughtful eyes scanned the mismatched spines - black, brown, white, and orange - lined with a cryptic array of letters - RSV, NASB, NKJ, NIV, ESV. He took hold of the King James Version, because that was the translation he'd always seen in church, all four times he'd gone.

The first time, he was six, and his mother, who was perhaps a little buzzed at the time, had been struck with a sudden notion that he and Merle needed to get saved. She dragged them down to the revival at Second Baptist Church and urged them to go up during the altar call. Daryl had little idea what was happening, but he said the words his mother told him to say to the preacher, who made him repeat a prayer, phrase by phrase, and then put him in a line of other people who were sorry for their sins. Daryl watched in horror as each person before him was shoved under that strangely blue water and then pulled back up again. He awaited his turn with a growing dread. Merle went before him and winked in Daryl's direction just before he went under.

Daryl walked cautiously into the baptismal font. The waters had come up only to Merle's waist, but they rose three-quarters of the way up Daryl's chest. The pastor lay one hand on Daryl's back and, with the other, painfully pinched his nostrils shut. A sudden panic seized him when he couldn't breathe, until it occurred to him that he just had to open his mouth. He did open it, about the same time that man ducked him under the cool water, and it felt like he swallowed an ocean full. Daryl came up sputtering and coughing, but to a chorus of applause. It was the last time anyone would ever clap for him again.

The baptism scared him, but Daryl had liked the clapping, and he'd liked the little, curly blonde neighbor girl who had leaned over the back of his pew when he returned to it. She'd smiled and said, "Congratulations." Most of all, he'd like all those white and brown powdered donuts lining the fake silver trays in the foyer, next to pitchers and pitchers of bright orange juice. So, two months later, when they still hadn't gone back to that church, Daryl asked his mother why. She ruffled his then light blonde hair and said, "Daryl, honey, once saved always saved!" Then she'd gone an opened a box of wine.

So he hung out by the curly blonde girls's cabin one Sunday morning, which was about half a mile from his own. He put on his least ripped pair of pants and his one and only button-down shirt - which was just a _little_ stained - and he waited at the bottom of their front porch stairs. The family came out in their Sunday best - no rips, no stains - and found him standing there. "You're Will Dixon's boy, ain't ya?" the father asked cautiously, as if being Will Dixon's boy might not be a good thing.

"Yes, sir," Daryl answered.

"What can I do you for?"

"Y'all goin' to church?" he asked shyly.

They took him along. The service was more boring than he expected, and he kept waiting for it to be over so he could hit those trays of donuts. Mama had forgotten to fix dinner last night, Daddy was out who knew where, and Merle had stayed at a girlfriend's. There'd been no cereal in the pantry that morning for breakfast, and no milk or juice in the fridge. He was so very hungry.

So when it was time for communion - which he had never seen before - and that silver tray with the loaf of bread on it came around - instead of pulling off a single pinch of a piece, he picked up the entire loaf and bit right into it, tearing off a large chunk with his teeth, chewing, and then swallowing it in one hungry gulp. Shocked, the curly-haired girl's mother ripped the bread from his hand.

The neighbors never took him to church again. Daryl didn't set foot in one for two years, when he had to attend his mother's closed-casket funeral. He just kept imagining her burned, charred body in that casket while trying to ignore the half-high girlfriend his father had brought to the occasion.

Eight months later, Daryl's grandmother died, and he went to church again. Will Dixon forced him to go up and plant a kiss on MawMaw's forehead in the open casket, under the threat of a "solid ass kickin'" if he didn't "pay his goddamn respects." Daryl walked up to the casket, sandwiched between Merle, who had just gotten out of juvie, and his father. He watch Merle bend and kiss her forehead, like it was nothing to him, and then walk back to the pew. Daryl followed his example.

MawMaw's flesh reeked of some baby-powder-like scent, and it felt strangely cool and rubbery beneath his lips. He couldn't stop thinking that he'd just kissed a dead woman. When he got back to the pew and sat down, he vomited all over the red plush carpet. His stomach, still seizing from the sudden eruption, clinched in on itself when his father turned from the casket, took the five steps to the pew, and looked down at the rancid chunks on the floor.

"It was me," Merle said, and later that night he took the beating that should have been Daryl's.

That was the last time Daryl set foot in a church. He didn't go to his father's funeral ten years later.

Now, the black, leather-bound Bible strangely light in his hands, Daryl settled onto the window seat. The pages rustled loudly when he turned them.

He wandered aimlessly through the pages, stopping here and there when a header caught his interest. He read about Jacob working seven years for Rachel, the service made light by his love for her, and how he'd gotten tricked by his father-in-law and ended up married to Leah instead. Daryl didn't feel bad for Jacob for getting tricked. He felt bad for Leah, and wondered what that night was like for her, being made to marry a man who didn't love her or want her. He wondered if that was what Carol had felt like her entire marriage to Ed.

Daryl skipped several books and read the story of King David, a tale of adultery, murder, betrayal, war, and friendship. It was the story of a man who had done things as bloody and as morally questionable as any one of them had ever done, and yet he was declared "a man after God's own heart." Daryl read, too, of Jonathan, the prince who had grown up with an erratic, violent father but who became David's best friend and right hand man. "And his soul was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." Daryl wondered what it would be like to have a friend like that, a friend who was closer than a brother.

Daryl looked up from the Bible when he heard the door to the library click shut. Rick strolled inside. Daryl didn't try to abruptly hide the fact that he'd been reading this time, but he did stand up and leave the Bible face down on the windowsill.

"Hey, man," Rick said. "I'm looking for some books on gardening."

Daryl nodded to a bookcase in the corner. "Over there."

Rick made his way to the case, and Daryl began to make his way out of the library, though he paused near Rick when he asked, "You know this library pretty well, huh?"

Daryl shrugged. "Guess."

Rick pulled out one of the books. "What were you reading over there?"

"Bible."

Rick took another book and then turned to face Daryl. "I never pegged you for a religious man."

"Ain't. Just readin'. I's bored."

"Well, if you're bored, you can help me and Carl with the planting."

"I ain't much for gardenin'," Daryl said. "More a hunter than a farmer."

"Well, it takes all kinds to make a world." Rick tucked the books under his arm. "I think we're building something here. Building for the future."

Daryl glanced at Rick's hands, the hands he'd seen red with blood many times. They were black with dirt. "Ya really think there's a future to build for?"

"I've got to think there is. Otherwise, what's the point?"

Daryl nodded.

"Michonne keeps wanting to chase the Governor," Rick told him, "keeps putting herself at risk out there, but I think it's time to put down roots."

"Not sure it's time to be beatin' our swords into plowshares just yet."

"It can't be all about killing all the time," Rick told him. "That's what I'm trying to teach Carl. I know he's growing up in a harsh world, but maybe, one day …" Rick took in a deep breath, as if he wasn't even quite sure what to hope for.

"Maybe he'll be the one to build the temple."

"What?" Rick asked.

"Nothin'," Daryl muttered. "Just…thinkin' out loud."

"I don't think temples are a priority right now."

"Nah. 'Course not," Daryl agreed. "Just...King David's boy Solomon built the temple, 'stead of David. 'Cause David had too much blood on his hands."

"I _do_ want Carl to be a man of peace. That's why I took his gun away."

That was a terrible idea, Daryl thought. No one should be unarmed in this world. Ever. At any time. Even in the shower. "Ya sure that's such a good idea?"

"Hershel thought Carl didn't need to shoot that boy."

"Yeah?" Daryl asked. "Hershel also thought it was a good idea to keep them walkers alive in the barn."

"I'm doing what I feel like I have to do," Rick said, "as a father."

"Well I don't know nothin' 'bout bein' a father." Daryl had never wanted children, not after the way he'd grown up. He was sure he'd be a shitty parent, and he was never going to risk turning into his own father. But when he'd been searching for Sophia, he couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to have a daughter of his own, to feel what Carol was feeling then - like your heart was walking around outside your chest somewhere. "So long as ya don't expect none of the rest of us to lay down our arms, way Hershel did."

"I'm just being a dad," Rick assured him. "You aren't my son."

"Damn right. Ain't nobody's son."

"Well, we're all somebody's son."

Instinctively, Daryl clenched his teeth. "I never let my own dumb ass father tell me what to do neither."

"I guess he didn't earn your respect then. But I'm hoping to earn Carl's."

Daryl wondered what he'd be like today, if he'd had a father more like Rick Grimes than one like Will Dixon. A man who wasn't ashamed to say he loved him, who taught him to garden, who kept an eye on him, who knew where he was most of the time. "Ya ain't doin' a bad job."

Daryl was heading for the door when Rick stopped him by calling his name. He turned.

"Listen," Rick said. "I've been wanting to thank you."

"For?"

"You really stepped up when I was...you know, having my problems." That was one way to put his trip to crazy town, Daryl thought. "Not just by leading as part of the Council, but...I owe a lot to you. You made sure Judith didn't go hungry."

"Weren't nothin'. Ain't gonna let a baby starve."

Rick smiled. "Beth said you were really good with her, that there were a couple days there when she'd only take the bottle from you."

Daryl shrugged.

Rick stepped toward him and clapped a hand on his shoulder. "Well, thank you."

Daryl looked down at the man's hand against his leather jacket. He wasn't used to being thanked. Or appreciated. "Sure," he muttered, and made his getaway through the library door.

[*]

"'S yer favorite book in the Bible?" Daryl asked Carol as he shoveled a spoonful of venison stew into his mouth. They'd had venison steak last night. Stew today. That deer he'd bagged was gone now.

Carol wiped her mouth with a napkin. "Interesting question coming from you."

"Then don't answer," he snapped.

"It wasn't an insult," she said, her tone half-soothing and half-annoyed. "I'm just not used to you making small talk. I didn't say I didn't _like_ it."

Daryl stared into his bowl. "Just thought ya read it is all. Said somethin' once, 'bout yer faith gettin' ya through."

"I guess Ruth. You know..." she shrugged. "Because it's a nice love story. And because Ruth's strong. She survives all sorts of loss. She has to leave her world behind and becomes a stranger in a strange land. But she works hard, and she's smart, too. She has the sense to pick an honorable man. And she's also ballsy."

"Ballsy?" Daryl asked. He didn't know this story.

"At night, she sneaks onto the threshing floor and lies down at Boaz's feet and says - throw your cloak over me."

"Is that like askin' him to - "

"- Marry her."

"Oh. That ain't what I was gonna say."

"It's symbolic," Carol explained. "The cloak. It means taking her under his protection."

"Mhmhm. So she goes in late at night, sneaky like, and _lies down_ next to him, and tells him to _take off his clothes._ And that's symbolic?"

Carol seemed to consider this. She chuckled to herself a little.

"Sound like a preacher tryin' to 'splain away a good fu - " He stopped himself. "Fun." He blushed.

"Well, Boaz _did_ marry her."

Beth came around, clearing the bowls. Carol got sidetracked into a conversation with Maggie, and Daryl slipped off to his cell where he replaced the strings on his bow with some he'd found on a recent run. Then he cleaned his gun. Then he thought about going to bed because there was nothing better to do. He was yanking off his boots when he sensed a familiar presence in the doorway of his cell, and his heart paused a beat. He looked up at Carol, who was dressed for bed. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," she said, that teasing lilt to her voice, "want to come lie at my feet?"

Daryl took off his other boot. He stood in his stocking feet and grabbed his crossbow. "Sure."

When he was sitting on the bottom bed of the bunk, and Carol had a hand on the ladder leading to the top, she bent quickly and kissed his cheek. The breath went out of him, and his hands curled around the metal bar below his mattress. "Goodnight, Daryl," she said, and climbed up and lay down.

Daryl swallowed and swung his legs into the bunk, lay his head on the pillow, and stared up at the coils, which lingered as a faint shadow when she clicked off the light.


	5. Sweet Joy

Daryl had gone back to the poetry section today, looking for that book by Rumi. It wasn't there. Maybe Michonne had snagged it. So he picked up a volume by William Blake instead – _Songs of Innocence_. His head leaned back against the rough wood of the window-wall, he began to read "Little Boy Lost":

 _'FATHER! father! where are you going?_  
 _O do not walk so fast._  
 _Speak, father, speak to your little boy,_  
 _Or else I shall be lost.'_

 _The night was dark, no father was there;_  
 _The child was wet with dew;_  
 _The mire was deep, and the child did weep,_  
 _And away the vapour flew._

He slammed the book shut and grimaced. Daryl didn't like the way the poem made him feel. It reminded him too much of the years after his mother died and Merle was away at juvie, when it was just him and his father, and his father would disappear for days at a time.

He remembered the time, with Merle no longer at home to step in for him, when his father had given him his first "solid beating." Daryl had knocked over his father's beer bottle with a blunt arrow from his toy bow. That was the last beer in the fridge, apparently, and his father flew into a rage that began with him kicking over the hassock. The overflowing ashtray rested on it, and cigarette butts went flying. Ash filled the air and coated Daryl's throat until he coughed. His coughing wasn't loud enough to overpower the sound of Will Dixon snapping his belt fiercely from its loops. He doubled it over, to give himself a better grip, but left the buckle end loose, so that the metal slapped and scraped when he began to wail on his youngest son.

Daryl ran off into the woods, fighting back tears and still smarting from the lashes, half hoping his father would follow and say he was sorry for what he'd done. He ran for an hour, past the stick fort he'd built with the neighbor boys, past all his usual haunts, until he was deep in the unfamiliar reaches of the forest. He tried to make his way home by following his own trail. He got lost and couldn't find his way home. Every day he foraged for food. He stayed out all night, thinking he would show his father - worry the man - make him think that he was dead. He made a fire the way Merle had taught him, rubbing sticks together and lighting dry debris. He gathered a nest of moss and leaves and slept a fitful sleep, until thunder roared across the sky and the heavens opened in a torrent of rain. He found shelter in alcove of a hill. The next morning he tried to follow his own trail back home, but the rain had washed it away.

For the next eight days, he wandered that forest, trying to find his way home. He managed to find stream water to drink, and grubs and insects and a berry here and there, but he was hungry. He didn't have a weapon, other than his pocket knife. He kept thinking his father would have to send someone to find him. He kept listening for the sound of helicopters and scouring the empty sky for one, but nothing and no one came.

Nine days after fleeing home, Daryl finally found his way back, terrified, wet, alone, and hungry. He wanted so badly for his dead mother to be there, or his incarcerated brother. Hell, he might even have been happy to see his father. But there was no one at all. His father's motorcycle was gone. The house was dirty and empty. More beer cans and bottles lay strewn across the living room than when he had left, and the ashtray was again overflowing with butts. The dust tickled his nostrils and made him sneeze.

Ravenous, Daryl went to the kitchen to make himself a sandwich, but he found the bread green with creeping mold. He grabbed a dirty spoon from the sink. The faucet sputtered and choked and then finally poured when he turned it on. Daryl waited for the water to run clean before rinsing the spoon, and then he went to fetch a jar of peanut butter from the cabinet above the stove. Eagerly, he turned the lid, only to find the light brown butter crawling with black ants. He was so hungry, he thought of eating it anyway, but instead he burst out onto the back porch, sat down on the top stair, and almost cried.

Maybe he would have cried, if a neighbor hadn't passed by, looked him over sympathetically, and said, "We're grillin' some dawgs. Wanna come eat with us?"

That wasn't exactly the way Daryl had told the story to Andrea, but that was the way it had happened.

The thought of Andrea made him wince with the strange realization that he missed her. He hadn't missed many people in his life. He missed his mother, long before she died, when she stopped reading to him and stroking his hair and talking to him at night and started talking only to the bottle. He missed his big brother, when Merle went away to juvie, and now that he was dead. He missed Miss O'Henry, when she left William Henry Talbot Walker Elementary School to marry and raise babies. But he'd since learned not to attach himself to people. So it was strange to think he missed Andrea, even a little bit. She wasn't even family. How had that happened? How had he become a person who had let himself care whether someone lived or died? How had he let himself _like_ these people? Andrea hadn't even been particularly nice to him. She'd made fun of him for being capable of using "big words" like "observant." Hell, she'd even shot him on accident once. But he missed her. For some damn reason he could not understand, he missed her. He missed T-Dog, too. Sophia. Hell, maybe even Lori.

He would miss them all, he realized, with something like fear - if and when they died - Rick, Michonne, Carl, Hershel, Glenn, Maggie, Beth...Carol.

Carol most of all.

Daryl more than liked Carol. He didn't know what it was he felt for her, because it wasn't something he'd ever felt before, but when he'd thought she was dead, and drove that cross into the empty grave that was a place marker for her body, should they ever find it, he'd felt a sorrow and a hopelessness overwhelm him, and he'd fallen to his knees on the dirt, shaking. Not weeping, but his body racked with a shaking he was afraid would never stop.

Daryl turned the _Songs of Innocence_ in his hands now, feeling the rough fabric of the hard cover. He hated the way the poem made him feel, but he was also intrigued by the fact that a poem _could_ make him feel. Cautiously, he pried the cover open again. He flipped forward, then back, closing his eyes until the book fell open to some random spot. His eyelids fluttered open, and the words came into focus:

 _I have no name_  
 _I am but two days old._  
 _What shall I call thee?_  
 _I happy am_  
 _Joy is my name,_  
 _Sweet joy befall thee._

 _"_ Lame ass poem," he muttered aloud _._

But then he read it again. He couldn't help but think of Little Ass Kicker, sucking on that bottle he had given her when they got back from the run, her hungry mouth closed around the nipple, and her wide, beautiful eyes open and staring up at him. So when he heard her cry, he thought he was imagining it at first, until he looked up and saw Beth, baby in the crook of one arm and bottle in the hand of the other.

She walked quickly to the windowsill where he sat.

He swiveled outward.

"Usually I'm fine with her," Beth said, "but I can't get her to stop crying," She held the baby out to Daryl. "Would you try?"

"Hey, little ass kicker," he murmured, his voice growing low and affectionate. Daryl took the baby and reached for the bottle. He teased her tiny lips with the nipple, but she turned her face away and cried. Little Ass Kicker wouldn't take it, not even from him.

"I think she needs to burp," Beth said, "but I tried…and she just wasn't doing it."

Daryl rested the bottle on the sill and lay Judith upright across his chest. Then, the way he'd seen Carol do countless times, he began not to pat her back, but to rub it, up and down, up and down, up and down, whispering, "That feel good, sweetheart? You like that?"

Little Ass Kicker let out a great big belch and spit up all over his leather jacket.

"Ewwww….." he groaned.

Beth giggled. "Come on. You've had walker guts all over that thing. A little spit-up can't bother you." She took a cloth off her shoulder as Daryl lowered the baby into a cradle position. Beth began wiping off his shoulder. He tensed. She was a little too close for his comfort. He didn't like anyone touching him, except...sometimes...more and more...Carol.

He forced himself not to pull away. Beth smiled as she cleaned the mess from his jacket. "You're really good with her."

"She likes me for some reason," he said.

"Because you have a good heart."

Daryl peered at Beth curiously. "Nah. I don't." If anyone had a good heart, it was Beth. So good she could be annoying.

Beth folded the burp cloth so the spit-up was inside and then slung it over her shoulder again. She took Judith back from him and cradled her upright against her shoulder. The baby began to fall asleep. "You're just a big softie, Daryl Dixon," she told him.

He frowned. "Ain't soft. Ain't never been soft."

"It wasn't an insult."

"Girl like you should be afraid to be alone with a guy like me."

"Why?"

"'Cause…" Because usually a young, pretty, polite, well-bread girl would assume a guy like him was a danger, that's why. But he didn't say that.

"Are you going to eat me all up?" she asked.

"Ain't hungry."

She laughed. She had a little girl laugh, even though she was clearly becoming a woman. "Zach treatin' ya a'ight?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Sure."

She didn't _sound_ sure. "If he's givin' ya any trouble, just let me know and I'll – "

"- He's no trouble. He's a nice guy. I like him. I guess he's…like...my steady boyfriend now."

"Ya guess?"

She shrugged. "It's not like I have a lot of options."

"Ain't got to be anyone's girlfriend."

She smiled. "What else is there to do?" She glanced at the book at the window sill. "Well, I guess you found something to do other than making out."

He flushed a pinkish-red.

"Poetry?" she asked. "Is it romantic?" She smiled mischievously. "Maybe you should read some to Carol."

"Ain't romantic," he said and slid off the windowsill. "And Carol knows how to read."

Beth chuckled. "That's not why I suggested you read it to her."

He ducked his head and made a straight path to the library door, leaving a smiling Beth behind.

That night he did _not_ read to Carol, but he _did_ ask her if she wanted him in her cell again, to keep her company through the night, there on the bottom bunk, and she answered with a wordless nod.

In the morning, he left his bedding on the bunk. He didn't bother to return it to his own cell. His desk and maps and extra clothes were still there, but he was starting to think his cell was just going to be a dressing room and office from now on and no longer his bedroom. After all, Carol saw him leave the pillow and blanket and unzipped sleeping bag behind and said nothing. And when he entered her cell again that night, after checking the corridors for any threats, after she was in her sweats and pink tank top, which he once again tried not to notice pulled tightly around her pert breasts, she asked him, "Would you put down the curtain?"

He unfolded the thick, red fabric she'd tucked up around a curtain rod, and it fluttered out over the open bars, clothing the room in privacy, and leaving only the dim glow of Carol's desk lamp, which bathed her blue eyes in gentle light.

"Goodnight," she said and stepped forward and kissed him once, softly, quickly, unexpectedly on the lips before turning just as quickly and scaling the ladder to the top bunk.

Daryl stood in stunned silence for a full minute before he switched off the lamp and lay down on the bottom bed. The afterglow of the lamplight lingered in his mind's eye, and the taste of her lips lingered on his.

 _I happy am._  
 _Sweet joy befall me._


	6. Tame Adventures

Daryl woke up thinking about that unexpected kiss, and all his reeling mind could determine was that Carol had been teasing him.

He went about his day as usual, following the pattern that had become his predictable routine: hunting in the nearby woods in the morning, snacking on berries and bugs as he did so, Council Meeting and helping to fortify the fence in the afternoon, communal dinner and compliments to the chef in the evening, and then a quiet trip to the prison library.

He liked the routine, the settled order to a life that had, long before the apocalypse, been without order. He liked always having something to do and always knowing what needed to be done next. He liked the predictability, and perhaps that's what unsettled him most about Carol - he never knew what to do next, and he never knew what _she_ was going to do next. And worst of all, like a complicated poem, he never knew what any of it _meant_.

[*]

Daryl slid a volume of Coleridge onto the library shelf. He'd let himself read the volume of Romantic poetry after he realized that capital-R romantic didn't mean the same thing as lowercase-r romantic. Daryl sure as hell wasn't reading any _romantic_ poetry. Romance was for whipped, dumb ass guys. He wasn't the type of man to bring a girl flowers or rub her back or cook dinner with her. Well…if you didn't count that Cherokee rose he'd once given Carol. Or that time he'd helped her with her sore shoulder after all that firing practice. Or when he'd first showed her the best way to tenderize venison.

Coleridge had turned out to be an okay read. Daryl had liked the poem about the ancient mariner. The man had a crossbow after all. Daryl didn't know what the ballad _meant_ , but he _felt_ it on some level. He'd been like a man lost at sea himself since Merle died, feeling the weight of some albatross around his neck.

He was looking for another book when Sasha strolled into the library. She had a relaxed yet semi-cocky way about her. In that sense, she reminded him a bit of Merle. Daryl didn't know her well, but he had to know her a little, because they were both on the Council.

Daryl moved quickly to the non-fiction section one row over, so he wouldn't be caught looking at poetry. Sasha strolled up to him, a knife strapped to her lower leg and a handgun on her waist. "Good evening," she said.

"Evenin'." He looked at the shelf before him and flushed red when he realized he was in the biology section, specifically sex education and reproduction.

Sasha's eyes followed his eyes, and she smiled. "Your parents never taught you about the birds and the bees?"

"I's just uh…lookin' for….uh…" He grabbed a book on animal breeding and held it toward her. "We got pigs, so."

"We have _a_ pig."

"Might could get another."

Sasha chuckled. "I can't figure you out, Daryl. I wish you'd stay in some kind of box."

"Hell would I get in a box for?"

She shook her head and strolled farther down the non-fiction section. Daryl put the animal breeding book back. She pulled out a book on household repair and carpentry. "Tyreese and I are thinking of building up a barricade, a second line within the fence."

"Better to reinforce the fence. So's we can still clean."

"It's really Tyrese's idea. I promised I'd at least propose it. Got to help a brother out, you know."

Daryl rested a hand on one of the shelves. "Ya ain't got to do everythin' your brother asks ya too. Took me awhile to figure that out."

"Well, trust me, _I_ don't." She slowly slid the carpentry book back and tilted her head toward him with a sympathetic look. "Sorry about Merle, by the way. I may not have been a fan of the man, but I know he went out fighting for us. And I don't know what I'd do if I lost my own brother."

"Ya'd do what ya gotta do."

Sasha nodded. "I suppose I would." She stepped back from the shelf. "I wonder if they have the Bobbsey twins in here! Did you ever read those as a kid?"

"No."

"They're about these two sets of twins, brother and sister, around nine or ten or so. They went on little adventures and solved mysteries."

"Kind of adventures?" Daryl asked.

"Pretty tame ones, really, though they didn't seem so tame to me at the time. But that was before all this. I wish our adventures were more like theirs. Or like the ones Tyreese and I used to have. We got stuck in a storm sewer once when it started to rain. We thought that was a big deal."

Daryl leaned back against a bookcase and picked under his thumbnail. "Me and Merle used to throw cherry bombs down the storm sewer. Makes an awesome sound."

"Once we were crawling on top of the jungle gym," she said. "That was back when they just had blacktops under them. We fell off. I broke my ankle. He broke his wrist. We thought that was a big deal too, at the time. But all we had to do was go to a modern hospital."

"Merle pushed me out a tree once, when I's little. Didn't break nothin', though. Just got bruised up."

"Did he get in trouble for it?"

"Hell no," Daryl said. "Ain't like I'd tell on 'em. My daddy would hide me for being a tattle tale and a pansy."

"My father always took my side in all our fights. Maybe because I was the girl. Did your dad play favorites?"

Daddy had a favorite one to beat, anyhow, whichever one was between the age of seven and thirteen. So Merle first, and then him. Will Dixon thought six was too young for a good, solid beating, and by fourteen, well….they could beat back. "Don't matter. He's probably dead."

"Probably? You don't know?"

"Ain't like I went to go check on him when all this shit started. But he was a dumb ass, and he was drunk half the time. Ain't no way he's survived this long."

"And I imagine he must have been pretty old, too," Sasha said.

"Yeah. I don't know. Sixty something."

" _What?_ Merle had to be at least fifty!"

"Yeah, well, my daddy was fifteen when he knocked my mama up."

Sasha's mouth fell open slightly, and he wished he hadn't said it. She probably saw him as white trash. They _all_ probably did, or had, at one time or another. Everyone except Carol, maybe, because she'd _married_ white trash. Of course, her white trash husband had been a step up from Daryl, at least on the educational and economic scale. Daryl had been poor; Ed had been lower-middle-class. Ed had at least finished high school, and Daryl had barely made it out of junior high. Still, Carol knew that culture, better than any of the others did, and she knew there was good and bad in it. She'd decided, for some reason, that Daryl was part of the good in it, and she'd decided that long ago, on Hershel's farm.

"How old was your mother?"

"Dunno. Seventeen maybe."

"Did they get married?"

"Hell yeah, they got married! He knocked her up."

Sasha laughed. "Well, where I come from, that doesn't necessarily mean you get married."

"Well, where you come from, I reckon girls don't get knocked up at seventeen."

Sasha leaned back against the bookcase and crossed her arms over her chest. "Where do you imagine I come from?"

"Some middle-class suburb. With an in-ground pool and a white picket fence."

She shook her head while smiling. "I grew up in the projects. In public housing in Jacksonville, Florida."

"Huh." Daryl considered this. "Projects must be different in Jacksonville."

"Why, you spend a lot of time in the projects in Atlanta?"

"Spent a year in 'em doin' maintenance when I's nineteen." He shrugged. "Some ways, they's a lot like the trailer park where we lived after my mama burned our cabin down. Just black people instead of white people. Apartments instead of double-wides. Blues instead of bluegrass. Crack instead of meth. Food was the same."

"Collard greens."

"Mhmhm. Love me some collard greens. Bet Carol could cook the shit out of some collard greens."

"We should grow them," Sasha suggested.

"Rick's planting some fancy ass lettuce or kale or some shit like that."

"Well that sounds like something we need to bring up at the council meeting tonight."

Daryl chuckled. He looked down at the library floor. He was always uncomfortable having friendly conversations. It was strange and strangely pleasant. So he made an effort. "If you grew up in the projects, why do ya sound so…"

"So what?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Dunno. Educated."

"I went to college on an academic scholarship. I grew up poor, and the neighborhood was a bit rough, but my dad was a war vet, and he was strict as hell. With my mom's cancer, though…he burned through all their savings and then some. That's why we ended up in public housing. She died when I was seven."

"That sucks."

" _Sympathy_ from Daryl Dixon? Once again, I can't keep you in your box."

"Just I know it sucks 'cause I's nine when my mama died."

"Was she sick?"

He shook his head. "That cabin I said burned down? She's in it. Passed out. Didn't wake up. I's out ridin' my bike with some of the neighbor kids. Came back and it was half ashes already. Police had to keep me at the station overnight."

"Why?"

"My daddy was out with some woman. Didn't come for two days after they put the fire out. He was pissed as hell when he saw it. Merle was in juvie."

"Damn," Sasha muttered. "And I used to think I had it bad. I hated my father, because of all his demands and standards. We didn't part on good terms. Sometimes I wish I could go back and tell him thank you, tell him I know I wouldn't have made it through college, let alone through an apocalypse, if he hadn't raised me the way he had."

"Ain't shit I want to thank my daddy for."

"What about your mother?"

He shook his head. "She mostly checked out 'bout the time I's four. Drank a lot. Hardly noticed I's there. Don't 'member what she was like 'fore then. Merle said she was the best mama ever. I wouldn't know."

"But you turned out okay," Sasha observed. "Do you have anyone to thank for that?"

He thought about it. "Carol, maybe."

Sasha raised an eyebrow. "Carol? You grew up together?"

"Nah. I just mean…I dunno what I mean." What did he mean? Why had he said it? It was just that Carol was the first person who had ever told him he was _good_. Not just good, but _every bit as good_ as Rick. She was also the first person who had ever expected _more_ of him when he was acting like an ass. Everyone else just expected him to act like one. And she was the first person he'd ever wanted to apologize to when he _did_ act like an ass. "Ya didn't know me when this shit started. I ain't the same I was then."

"Were you more like Merle?"

"Nah, I weren't like Merle. But I weren't the same neither. And what's wrong with Merle?"

Sasha didn't reply.

"Never mind. I know. He weren't no Ghandi. But neither am I."

"None of us are," she said. "Except maybe Hershel."

"Hershel can shoot up some shit with a shotgun though, when he's got a mind to."

Sasha nodded.

There was an awkward silence. Daryl figured that must mean it was his turn to speak, but he had no idea what to say. "I got to…uh…go now..'cause...uh...Carol needs me for something."

"I bet she does." Sasha was pressing her lips together tightly, like she was holding in a laugh.

Daryl flushed red and scurried out of the library.

It turned out Carol _did_ need him for something. The rod she'd used to put up the privacy curtain on the cell they were now sort of sharing had fallen down. She needed him to hold up one side while she secured is other. Through his unruly bangs he peered over her as she stretched up on tip toes, arms above her head, to click it in place. Her shirt pulled even more tightly than usual over her breasts when she did that, and he cursed himself for the place his mind went.

"Your end," she told him, and he blinked and turned quickly away and clicked it in place, too, before screwing the bracket tight again. While he was turning the screwdriver and tightening it that last bit, Carol drew up beside him and said, "You're good at the screwing. You do it nice and hard, but still slow, to make sure you get the job done just right."

The heat rushed to his face. " _Stop_."

She giggled.

He finished the last twist of the screwdriver and then lowered it to his side. Feeling flustered and irritated, he blurted, "Why ya always makin' fun of me?"

"I'm not," she said softly. "How is a little affectionate teasing _making fun_ of you?"

"'Cause ya don't mean it!" he muttered. "Like them girls in the halls in junior high, used to ask if I wanted to take 'em to the eighth grade dance, and then when I froze and stuttered, they just laughed at me. Just wanted to see how I'd react. Damn mean is what it was."

The privacy curtain now down inside the cell, Carol wrapped a hand around one bar, pushing the cloth around it, and looked at him with her soft blue eyes. "I…I didn't mean to be mean," she said softly.

"Then cut it out."

"Okay," she said quietly. Her eyes flitting down. They came back up hesitantly. "But what if I _do_ mean it?"

Daryl swallowed. "Hell ya mean, mean it? Mean it how?"

She shrugged. "I'd love for you to take me to the dance."

He growled.

"I'm serious. I mean, if there was a dance. If we had a dance. I'd want _you_ to be my date."

"Can't dance worth shit," he said. "Hell would ya do with me at a dance?"

She hooked a finger through his belt loop and inched closer until their bodies were almost touching. His breath caught and he felt like he had this great lump in his throat he couldn't quite swallow. She raised her eyes to his, and her head, so that her lips were an inch from his. He could smell the sweet scent of honeysuckle on her breath. He'd plucked her a handful from the forest today, while hunting. "You don't really have to dance," she said. "Not in junior high. You just, come together…" Now her body was pressed against his and he felt a jolt rip through him. "Sway a little, back and forth…"

She began to urge him to move, and he was moving all right, but it wasn't his hips that were moving. He was stirring to hardness against her. He jerked away. "Cut it out," he muttered.

Carol was the one to turn bright red this time. She turned immediately away. "Sorry," she said, and her voice cracked a little, like she was really hurt, and she began frantically clawing at the privacy curtain to get to the cell door. "I thought maybe you actually liked me. I'm sorry. I was an idiot. I'll stop." She got the curtain open and began to jerk the door open, but, his arm over her left shoulder, he slammed it shut again with a clang.

The curtain fell closed over it.

Carol lay her forehead against the rough cloth coating the rigid bars, her back to him.

Daryl's body covered hers against the door. "Ya ain't teasin'?" he breathed in her ear.

"No," she managed, in a small whisper.

"Ya…ya want to…?"

"Yes."

"Damn," he breathed. "Hell didn't ya just tell me?"

"I did," she turned beneath him. He grasped a cloth coated bar with either hand, so that she was pinned between him and the cell door. "I did. A hundred times I did."

He pressed his forehead to hers, licked his lips, and closed his eyes as her lips pressed against his. He savored the taste of her. He'd never kissed a woman like this, this tenderly, this long. He dropped his hands from the bars and let them roam her back while he explored her mouth. His tongue danced with hers.

Carol was breathing hard when she pulled away. She buried a hand in his hair. "I'm not teasing," she assured him. "But…I'm…it's been…" She looked down. "It was never good with Ed. I don't know how to…I…"

He stepped back from her, and she winced, looking scared and vulnerable and beautiful. "Ain't in a hurry," he reassured her. "Just glad to…turn the page."

She smiled. "We've spent a long time on that page, haven't we?"

"Yeah." He smiled. "Too long."

"Daryl?" came Rick's voice from the hallway. "Hey, Daryl! You were suppose to relieve Glenn on watch ten minutes ago. Where the hell are you?"

"Comin'!" Daryl yelled. "Be there in a minute!"

"Well hurry up!" Rick's footsteps faded down the hall.

Carol inched forward and kissed him again, once, softly. "Let's start a new chapter," she said, "but let's not rush straight to the ending."

"Yeah," he agreed. "Sounds 'bout right."

She smiled, stepped away, and let him turn and slip from the cell.

 **THE END**


End file.
